"[1] King has been criticized for his affiliation with white supremacist ideas,[4] made controversial statements against immigrants,[5][6][7] and supported European right-wing populist and far-right politicians who have engaged in racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

[8] For much of King's congressional tenure, Republican politicians and officials were silent about his rhetoric, and frequently sought his endorsement and campaigned with him because of his popularity with northwest Iowa's voters.

King attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1970, where he was a member of the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity and majored in math and biology, but did not graduate.

King's involvement with the Iowa Land Improvement Contractors' Association led to regional and national offices in that organization and a growing interest in public policy.

[36][37] King later said of his 2012 victory, "I faced $7 million, the best of everything Democrats can throw at me, their dream candidate and everything that can come from the Obama machine, and prevailed through all of that with 55 percent of my district that was new.

[citation needed] In the wake of being stripped of his committee seats, King faced a credible primary challenger in State Senator Randy Feenstra, who represented much of the district's northwest portion.

[47] He has continuously voted for Iraq War legislation, supported surge[clarification needed] efforts and opposed a time table for troop withdrawals.

"[62][63] King sponsored legislation to ban abortion of a fetus that has a detectable heartbeat, which can in some cases occur as early as 6 weeks (before many women know they are pregnant).

[69][70] In February 2010, King tweeted about chasing and shooting a raccoon that had tried to enter his house during a blizzard, prompting criticism from animal rights groups.

He praised the "Joe the Plumbers of the world who many days would prefer the aroma of fresh dirt to that of the sewage from American elitists who disparage them even as they flush."

[84][85] A day after claiming that climate change was more "a religion than a science," he reasserted that many scientists overreact when discussing the consequences of global warming,[86] saying, "Everything that might result from a warmer planet is always bad in [environmentalists'] analysis.

[89][90] In December 2020, King was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives who signed an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden prevailed[91] over incumbent Donald Trump.

The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of the election held by another state.

"[97] Objecting to "taxpayer-funded subsidies, pet projects and added bureaucracy", King voted against The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in the U.S. House of Representatives, saying, "Our economy will not recover because government spends more.

"[98] King also stood out as one of only 11 members of Congress to vote against the $51.8 billion Hurricane Katrina relief package in 2005, claiming there was no comprehensive plan for spending the aid money.

"[110] In May 2017, King said he had moved from supporting the American Health Care Act, the Republican replacement to the Affordable Care Act, to being unsure as a result of benefits such as emergency services, hospitalization and prescription drugs that were added following his backing of the measure: "Once they negotiated [essential health benefits] with the Freedom Caucus and Tuesday Group, it is hard for me to imagine they will bring that language in the Senate, or that it will be effective because they diluted this thing substantially."

King added that he and Trump agreed on the need for the federal government to not have a role in health insurance and that Republicans would not have had difficulty repealing the Affordable Care Act had the party prioritized its replacement within the first week of the 115th Congress, in January 2015.

[126][127] The Washington Post has described King as "the U.S. congressman most openly affiliated with white nationalism", while Vanity Fair has said his opinions in this direction are "barely veiled".

[163] King praised Bernie Sanders numerous times for his view on immigration, saying they were "closer to mine than it is some of the presidential candidates on the Republican side.

[106][165] King was rebuked by members of his own party, including Speaker Paul D. Ryan, but praised by white supremacist David Duke and The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website.

King called for an additional $5 billion for the wall, to be paid for with federal dollars coming from Planned Parenthood, food stamps, and other federal welfare programs,[166] saying, "I would find half of a billion of dollars of that right out of Planned Parenthood's budget, and the rest of it could come out of food stamps and the entitlements that are being spread out for people who have not worked in three generations.

[106] In February 2020 on Twitter, King insinuated former DHS official Philip Haney had been murdered as a reprisal for "archiving data that incriminated the highest levels of the Obama administration".

[180] On July 18, 2016, King participated in a panel discussion on MSNBC,[181] during which a panelist from Esquire magazine suggested that the 2016 convention could be the last in which "old white people would command the Republican Party's attention".

[200] On March 12, 2017, King expressed his support for Geert Wilders, a far-right Dutch politician known for his anti-Islam views, leading up to the election in the Netherlands, stating, "Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny"[8][106] and "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies," referring to his views on ending birthright citizenship and promoting "an America that's just so homogenous that we look a lot [sic] the same.

[205] In June 2018, he retweeted a comment by Mark Collett, a British neo-Nazi and self-described admirer of Hitler, about Europe "waking up" to mass immigration.

[206] On August 24, 2018, King was interviewed by the Austrian website Unzensuriert (Uncensored), which is connected to the country's Freedom Party, part of the First Kurz government.

[10][209][210] In response to the Goldy endorsement, and King's other racially contentious remarks, Minnesota-based agricultural cooperative Land O'Lakes ended its support for his reelection.

[217][218][219] In 2018, King spoke to an Austrian far-right publication about "the great replacement", which The New York Times described as "a conspiracy theory on the far right that claims shadowy elites are working behind the scenes to reduce white populations to minorities in their own countries.

We strongly urge you and the congressional leadership to demonstrate your revulsion with Rep. King's actions by stripping him of his subcommittee chairmanship and initiating proceedings to formally censure or otherwise discipline him.

[222][223] After King's loss in the 2020 Republican primary in Iowa's 4th congressional district, he wrote a book giving his account of what happened and travelled for several months to promote it.